The 200 years that it took to industrialise the world and seep damaging carbon into the atmosphere can be mitigated within the next three decades, but only if funds are made available to kick-start a rapid decarbonisation process that revolves around social awareness.

That is the view of John Schellnhuber, chair of Europe’s largest public-private innovation partnership Climate-KIC, who believes social pressure and an immediate decarbonisation strategy are key to ensuring that global warming is limited to the “well-below 2C” target established through the Paris Agreement.

Schellnhuber was speaking at the Climate Innovation Summit in Frankfurt (8 November). His message that “You have physical and biological tipping points …. but equally you also have social tipping points” was echoed by Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), who addressed the conference via web link.

spinosa said “Right now, governments are meeting in Marrakesh to discuss the details of how the Paris Agreement will move forward. Their discussion must be complemented by a wider discussion on how to achieve transformative change and truly meet the climate challenge. We must expand the network when working on climate solutions. Transformational change will not happen if only a small fraction of the private sector takes action. Transformational change requires action from every community in every country.”